The introduction of the three-year training occupation "specialist/service employee for protection and security" almost fifteen years ago was intended to improve the quality of security services. However, too few well-trained specialists are employed, at best, as management staff for more demanding assignments. They then take on the coordination and deployment planning of security personnel in the preliminary planning stage and, if they have the appropriate skills and target-oriented guidance, the creation of security concepts, at least for small companies or additional work for SMEs and corporations. The remaining less well-trained specialists, including service personnel for protection and security, eke out their existence in the positions of a security guard according to § 34 a GewO or a certified protection and security guard. A dream of efficiency and an expression of misguided education policy.
The vast majority of employees, however, have only passed the "expert knowledge test in accordance with Section 34a of the Trade, Commerce and Industry Regulation Act" (GewO) at the local Chamber of Industry and Commerce. Such an examination is mandatory before being allowed to take on activities in property, plant, event or personal protection in the public legal sphere. A not insignificant proportion of security staff only have the training according to § 34 a GewO. This represents the minimum training of only 40 teaching units of 45 minutes each. The change in responsibility for the regulations for the private security industry to the Federal Ministry of the Interior and for Home Affairs has so far brought no changes. Only the draft of the Security Services Act has been launched and has reached the relevant committees of the Bundestag. Of course, this plays into the hands of the lobbyists who want to maintain the unsatisfactory conditions in vocational training and further training in conjunction with the regulations of the collective wage agreement for the security industry in order to secure their financial interests. In principle, this is a reflection of the value of the national security architecture.
Leadership skills and scientifically sound knowledge of law and management have not yet been consistently taught in Germany in a timely manner, in line with market requirements and security situations.
In most cases, security companies work to protect private clients, for example as security services with a wide range of tasks, plant security, private and store detective agencies, personal protection and others. As a rule, security guards are only allowed to exercise the rights to which their clients are entitled. They only have the powers of intervention that anyone can legally claim, in particular the civil rights of protection and self-help, criminal self-defense and arrest rights. For example, a private security service is permitted to use physical force against third parties if there is a situation of self-defense (for example, if they themselves or another person is attacked). Even this seemingly banal assessment of a self-defense situation requires a sound knowledge of self-defense and emergency law and legally sound application as part of the decision-making process when dealing with the self-defense situation. Where should these skills come from? Something as a result of 40 hours of instruction in accordance with § 34 a GewO? What a misjudgement by the authorities! Or as a result of the examination of expertise in accordance with § 34 a GewO?
An equally serious misjudgment! One could get the impression that demands for certified protection and security personnel as well as specialists/service personnel for protection and security serve the sole purpose of filling positions demanded by the market, no matter how. The main thing is that the position has a corresponding IHK qualification (qualification or professional qualification). The quality is irrelevant. Because the higher the quality, the more the call for fair pay is heard! And that is not what is wanted in terms of financial policy.
We do not currently see a quantitative increase in the volume of public contracts as a qualified partner of the police forces as expedient due to the lack of skills of too many security staff. We should work on this intensively and to a high standard.
In addition, a qualitative change is only possible if the state fulfills its obligation for internal security in the form of creating a well-founded, measurable, independent of lobbying, sustainable and controllable legal basis. And this is monitored by equally independent control bodies.
So much for the dream! This is clearly visible in the context of this country's foreign policy, the economic crises, the changing developments in the known risk and crisis areas and other seemingly more important tasks currently facing the leading parties in this country than the situation of internal security and private security and their role in the security architecture of this country.
Berlin, July 2024
F. Müller